Royalty Free Stock Images And Photographs For Your Website Or Blog

Royalty Free Stock Images And Photographs For Your Website Or Blog

If you’re a blogger, social media marketer or looking to design a new website, you know how difficult it can be to find the perfect photograph or image to accompany a post. We all know that photos are one of the most important components for improving engagement, but unless you’re willing to pay for it, finding a great one can be seriously time-consuming.

Not to worry, we put together this handy list of free stock photo websites that you can bookmark it for quick reference.

Quick Note About Licenses

Many of these images are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication. What this means is that you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. However, some photos may require attribution.

1. Pixabay

Pixabay offers over 400,000 free images and videos for both personal and commercial use. All images on the site are royalty-free and covered under Creative Commons CC0, which means they can be modified and used commercially online and in print.

2. Freepik

3. Unsplash

Unsplash offers 10 new photos every 10 days via an email subscription and on their website. All photos are licensed under CC0. You can navigate the site by viewing the photos in their larger versions, but when browsing I usually find it easier to switch to the grid format.

4. Everypixel

Everypixel is an amazing website which can help you find the perfect photograph. When searching for an image, they’re site searches over a range of other free and paid stock photo sites. You are also able to filter between free and premium images.

5. Stocksnap.io

When researching resources for free social media images, I was told by more than one socially-savvy person that StockSnap was their favorite site. The free images here can be filtered by date, what’s trending, number of views or downloads, as well as the amount of keyword searches.

6. Burst (Shopify)

Burst was launched to help entrepreneurs make better products, websites, and marketing campaigns. Most of the pictures are original photos that were taken in-house and are themed around trending business niches — everything from DIY juice making to high end technology. You can also find more general photographs as well.

7. Negative Space

This site adds new free CC0 stock photos every week. These images are searchable by category, position, and color. Follow Negative Space on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for updates on when new images are added.

8. Foodiesfeed

9. Picjumbo

Picjumbo is a collection of totally free photos for your commercial & personal works. New photos are added daily from a wide variety of categories including abstract, fashion, nature, technology and much more.

10. Life of Pix

Life of Pix is a collection of free high resolution stock images with no copyright restrictions, the beautiful photos are free for personal and commercial use. If you need social media images of the moving variety, their sister site Life of Vids offers royalty-free videos, clips, and loops for you to use to your heart’s content.

11. Pikwizard

Pikwizard is a great new stock photography website. It has 100,000 high-quality images with 20,000 being exclusive to Pikwizard. The website has no attribution required and also features a free image editing tool.

As you can see, there’s a number of fantastic resources for stock photographs, and these are only a handful worth mentioning. These websites have become a blessing for web designers, marketers and bloggers. No need to rely on those cheesy stock photos any longer!

Tell us about your sources for free stock photos and images in the comments section below. Please share this article if you have found it useful.

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WEBSITE HOSTING

What is Web Hosting?

When you design a website and want other people to see it, you will need to publish (or upload) it with a web hosting service.

Web hosting services work by storing your website files in high-powered computers (web servers) connected to a very fast network. When someone types in your web address (such as www.advertisingsolutions.co.za), the Internet connects to the web server holding your website files and then transfers your website information back to their computer. From there they can surf and view the pages of your website.

DOMAIN NAME

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name (www.yourcompanyname.co.za) is essentially your company’s Internet address; the same way your company’s street address is used to find your offices, a domain name is used to find your website. Consider this: Pick a domain name that’s memorable and relevant!

NUMBER OF STOCK PHOTOS

Stock photos are professionally taken photographs that we can buy online to use commercially, without having to stress over copy-right issues. It can be used to enhance your website or in marketing material.

Stock photos can save you quite a bit of time and money, as you do not have to hire a photographer just to have some quality images for your website. While stock images cover a broad range of applications, it can be difficult to acquire pictures for a certain niche, or a specific product.

NUMBER OF SLIDES

What is a slider?

A banner slider is comprised of images and text on multiple slides, allowing you to rotate content on a single space on your website. It’s most commonly the first thing you see (apart from the logo and menu) on a website’s home page. The purpose of the slider is to catch the attention of the viewer while being visually appealing and easy to read. It can be used to display selected information, such as promotions or highlighting specific products or services, and can also be used to easily navigate your site.

How many should I use?

This is dependable on the amount of content you have on your website. Small websites that do not have much information 1-2 sliders will be enough. Websites with more pages and content to market will require more sliders to make the navigation of the site easily digestible for the viewer, while promoting certain products or content. We do not recommend more than 5 slides, as we find that most viewers spend a few minutes on your home page before moving on to another page and won’t view more than 5 slides.

WEBSITE TYPE

Standard Website Design

This design is for the general purpose of getting your company’s information out on the internet and reaching potential customers. This does not include an online store/eCommerce, directories or custom development. As we use WordPress, you will also have the option of logging in to your website and doing some small changes yourself if you choose.

Online Store/eCommerce

This design option is for selling your products online, as well as having your information online and reaching potential customers. This includes payment gateway integration such as Payfast and EFT and also includes up to 50 individual products. If you have more products you can simply load them in yourself by logging into the backend of your website, where you can also manage your inventory and take stock. If you have a large selection and would prefer us to do it, we can assist you with loading all your products for an additional fee.

NUMBER OF PAGES

Most websites are comprised of 4 pages, eg: Home, About, Services/Products and Contact.

Your Home page welcomes the viewer, with a general summary of your company and what you have to offer. It also helps the viewer easily navigate your site. Your About page may list company history, your mission and vision, team members, company values or any information regarding your company.

Your Products or Services page is where you expand on the products or services you have. Your Contact page lists all your contact details, such as your physical address, contact number and email address. It is also good to have an enquiry form so potential clients can easily get in contact with you.

These are just the most common pages used, the amount of pages will depend on the amount of information you have.